Float Face Down
by Tinhen
Summary: Improv 19. An angsty, violent, angry, and convoluted trip through the mental breakdown of a princess. Other characters are ambiguous. Landlocked. Rorycentric. Somewhat disturbing.


Float Face Down

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Author: Tinuviel Henneth

Email: smolderingbunny@aol.com

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Improv 19: angry pink hop unrequited 

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Summary: An angsty, violent, angry, and convoluted trip through the mental breakdown of a princess. Other characters are ambiguous. 

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Author's Note: Set at any time post-Nick & Nora/Sid & Nancy, based on any boy (even perhaps Dave or Jamie) who isn't Dean. Written in one day after writing a death scene of another fic, watching Fight Club and rereading Green Eve's Shivery. Title comes from Incubus song "Warning." Let's see who gets the reference.

*

Rory couldn't watch as the figures outside jumped backwards and forwards, enticing one another to strike back like riled serpents, daring each other to cross the chalk like separating Jack from Tyler as Marla looked on in terror. She was curled into the tightest little ball she could manage without cutting off her oxygen supply. Although, breathing didn't really matter. Nothing really mattered right then. Rory was much too cold (funny; it was hot outside), much too frightened, and much too far-gone from Rory to really care about anything. Her thoughts were skidding around the hollow of her mind like intoxicated skaters at Rockefeller Center at Christmastime. And she couldn't catch any of them because she was in her school saddle shoes in the middle of the icy rink. She wanted to go home and curl up in her mother's bed, under the pink bedclothes, and never leave. Her mother's bed equaled safety. Rory felt very much unsafe at the moment.

She cringed in on herself and squeezed her eyes shut as she heard him scream again. She could have watched, too, if she wanted to, through the lathe covering the doors. But she didn't want to see, and she couldn't see even though she was staring straight ahead. There was no color and no light in the room to her mind, just shapes that moved much too quickly for her to focus on them or keep track of them. The smallest of them all (save for the dwarfish man she had thought to be an ally) was the only one who was not swaying or pulsing with ire, because that figure was static. His frame was much to thin compared to the monstrosities that circled him like cats of prey circling their poor prey. A small part of Rory just wished they would put him out of his misery. He was kneeling rather unsteadily before the next smallest figure in the room of several dozen, the leader with a commanding, angry voice and a Spanish accent. He had his shoulders tensed up, and his chin down. The other man took exception to that and began to yell at him in Spanish, which he responded to. Rory closed her eyes.

The fresh, terrifying crack of flesh on flesh resounded through the room, and the minions pulsated and cheered. Rory wanted to die. She wanted the call out, but her voice was gone, stolen and withered. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to be able to just hop up and leave the closet and tell them all to just leave him alone. Damn it, she loved him. She wanted to tell him that. But what did they care about the love of an insignificant teenage girl? She opened her eyes and watched as his slow-motion figure hit the concrete floor right cheek first. He was out. She could make out the sound of his blood splattering from the new wound, even over the roar of the crowd.

"Stop!" she could hear herself screaming, and suddenly there was a girl out there, standing between the prone figure sprawled out on the ground and the Hispanic man who had knocked him down and would kill him if he so pleased. Rory watched as one possessed through the lathe as the girl knelt beside the body and the room grew quiet. She saw that the girl had long dark hair and pale skin, eyes hidden behind small dark sunglasses. The girl wore black-- leather pants and a leather jacket, with a startlingly white shirt underneath. She was not wearing a bra.

"Who did this?" the girl yelled out. "Who said that this could happen?" She touched the figure on the ground. Rory could not look away. The girl turned him over and looked down into his face. "Someone answer me!" she screamed. She ran her hands over his bloodied and swollen face, down the delicate throat, over his chest and down to his hips, where he had been cut right above the left bone. The body was still shaking, electromagnetic impulses still coursing through his muscles. Rory couldn't bear to watch. Was he dead? She didn't know. She didn't want to know.

The girl took off her sunglasses and threw them as hard as she could at the man responsible for the beating. They hit him in the shins and bounced off, hitting the ground before his feet with a metallic crunch. Good God, Rory thought, she looks like me. But not really. She rose to her feet and approached the man. She grabbed him by the front of his sweat-soaked maroon wife beater and pulled him close, their noses almost touching. His was grimy and long, beads of sweat running along its length. "I said," she hissed, "whose idea was this?"

The man did not answer. His eyes were wide, staring at the girl with something like abject horror. She grew disgusted with him and shoved him away. He stumbled backwards and into a few men behind him.

"You're not so big, Franco," she taunted. Rory watched in almost envy as she paced back and forth in front of the man. This girl held them all in fear of her, and she was scarcely bigger than the boy on the ground. "Drop him," she snapped at the two men who had caught his fall. They abruptly let go of him. "I want to know why you think that you can just pick up a boy like that and do what you did," she said. "Come on, Franco. You're good at lying. Make up a lie I might believe."

Rory watched with rapt attention as Franco's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. He was truly terrified. To think, mere seconds earlier he had been all testosterone as he savaged the poor boy on the ground. "He was trespassing," he choked out.

The girl knelt in front of him, her face level with his. She shucked off her jacket, revealing intensely muscular arms not befitting a woman. Her shirt was sleeveless, and all the harsh black tattoos on her arms glistened in the half-light of the room. "Was he?" she asked, her voice bordering on amused.

Franco coughed and tried to scoot away from her. She grabbed his belt buckle and pulled him back. "You told us what to do with trespassers," Franco insisted, his voice rising several octaves.

The girl sat back on her haunches and stared at him for a moment before jumping to her feet. She turned to the rest of the men in the room. "Do you hear that, boys?" she asked softly. "Franco says that boy was trespassing." She kicked Franco as hard as she could in the stomach. "You do know, Franco, what we do with trespassers, right?"

"Beat them unconscious," he supplied, coughing again. This time there was a small about of blood in his mouth from biting his tongue. Rory watched the blood dribble down his grimy chin.

"Good boy," the girl said. She picked up her jacket and pulled it back on. She looked at one of the larger men. "Melvin, get everyone outside to watch your performance." His lips drew back in a terrible smile, revealing missing teeth. He grabbed Franco by the collar of his beater and dragged him outside. In the open doorway, they were framed in the harsh light of morning. Rory let out a breath she hadn't been aware of.

The door, heavy and metal, banged shut behind the last man. The dwarfish one who had lied to them, who had betrayed their location. He had come to watch, too, the sick little creature. Rory couldn't think anymore. Her last thought was seeing the girl kneel down beside him in the middle of as empty room still hot with the body heat of a few dozen men, touch his face, and then disappear. 

A few minutes later, Rory felt safe enough to open the door a crack more to see if she trusted herself enough to go over to him to see if he was okay. She felt the oxygen rush into her lungs after escaping the cramped, airless little closet, and it made her feel lightheaded. She took a few deep breaths before remembering her boyfriend and scrambling over to him. It made her heart break to see him in this state. She knew, too, that if he had a choice, he would have sooner moved to Australia than let her see him like this. But in the same vein, he would have sooner shot himself in the face before he would put her in the dangerous situation in the first place.

"Oh, come on," she whimpered, gingerly touching his forehead. She gasped at the feeling of the blood on her fingertips. It was smooth and warm, but it made her feel so soiled. She choked and jumped up, turning away from him and running. She threw open the door and ran across the empty yard and down the empty street and she ran until she couldn't run any longer. She felt so weak and helpless and suddenly not so very smart. What was she thinking, leaving him there? But it was too late now.

She finally stopped when she found herself running along an empty highway bordered on both sides by a mix of deciduous trees. She was bordering on collapse from sheer exhaustion. She felt. . . well, at the moment she didn't really feel much of anything but fear and shock and anger and regret. It was a step up from unrequited love, sure, but still. She could remember sitting, just yesterday, in her AP Government and Politics class when she suddenly lost interest in the discussion about the Roe vs. Wade case. Her mind drifted to her conversation the night before. After the period was over, she went home, completely and uncharacteristically cutting her last two classes.

They had met on her front porch. They had decided to leave. They had been gone for eight hours now, she realized, looking at her watch. And look at what had happened in that short tenure. He was lying alone and unconscious, she was beginning to think she'd suffered a nervous breakdown in that closet, and her thoughts still weren't staying in line for her.

"Oh, come on," she mumbled to herself. "This isn't fair."

She kept walking. Walking was therapeutic and she actually didn't have to think, a plus to a mind in the state hers was.

"I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, all standing in a row. . ." An inane, nonsensical little song, really, and quite fitting for the situation because of that. Her mind kept flashing the image of him lying there, all bloody and broken, like it wanted to torment her. The way his hair was matted down with blood and sweat and other things, the twitching his body had sporadically done. So corpse-like and still otherwise. She felt guilty and stopped thinking.

After a while, it all ceased to matter. What was done, was done. She couldn't go back to that building-- she couldn't know his state. She couldn't go home, because her mother would have questions, and Luke would have questions, and most specifically Lane would have questions and she really, really didn't want to answer Lane's questions. It was August, she was almost nineteen. She had already graduated and she was a real adult. She could drop out of sight.

She kept seeing his face in her head. She saw Dean's, too. Dean was her Estella if she'd ever had one. Thoughts of his opinion constantly plagued her. Sometimes, she could hear his voice in her head. It wasn't that he said deeply moving, intellectual things that stirred her very soul. That was Dean, after all. But the sheer innocence with which he said it disturbed her. She wondered briefly if that was how he had viewed her. Thinking about him hurt, too. 

The funny thing was, she could hear his voice echoing in her head: I bring nothing to the table, Rory. I bring nothing to the table, Rory. I bring nothing to the table, Rory. I bring nothing to the table, Rory. It made her want to scream.

I bring nothing to the table, Rory. I bring nothing to the table, Rory. I bring nothing to the table, Rory.

The sun was setting, the sky was pink and gold. Very pretty. It made her head hurt. What right had the sky to be so gorgeous when at that moment the most beautiful man she had ever met was lying on a dirty floor somewhere, possibly dead? 

"What are you doing?"

Rory turned around. Walking down the road behind her was the girl who had been back at the rally. Who had dispersed them, saved him, and defeated Franco. She had new sunglasses on. Her long, dark hair was blowing all over the place from a wind Rory couldn't feel herself. "What?" she asked.

The girl shook her head chastisingly and smirked. "You're so silly, girlie. Running away like that. That's bad, you know."

Rory pulled her shirt around her tighter in an effort to keep warm. The night had suddenly gone from sultry and steamy to stale and cold without a breeze in the atmosphere. She was freezing. "What do you want from me?" she demanded of the girl.

The girl looked high and mighty, imperious. "I don't want anything from you, Rory," she said. "It's all a matter of what you want from you."

"Excuse me?" Rory was not following. She squinted, but the girl's outline was blurred and she kept flickering, like an image on an old television set. She couldn't bring the girl properly into focus.

"You know what I'm talking about, Rory," the girl said. Her voice was like a badly tuned radio, coming in and out in quality and volume. She was closer now, and Rory could make out her face. It was a pretty face, but the cheekbones stuck out too far and she wasn't quite as young as Rory had thought. But she was Rory surely enough. A gaunt, aged mockery, but still, Rory.

Rory wanted to turn and run but she felt thick and heavy like a true Mississippi drawl. Older Rory approached and touched her face with bony fingertips, the same fingertips that had ventured over the contours of his broken body however long ago it had been. Rory felt her heart match that of a hummingbird and in her throat at that. She was more afraid now on the side of a highway in God knows where with an older version of herself touching her cheek. Maybe she was mad.

Yes, she decided, moving away from Older Rory slowly. Older Rory watched her move with cynical detachment. "Oh, little girl, what's wrong?" she asked. "Are you scared?" She tossed her head back and laughed a cynical laugh. She took off her sunglasses and her eyes were large, blue, and hollow. There were crows feet at their corners. Cynical, cold eyes in a cynical, cold face. "Oh, of course you're scared. Poor little rabbit. You don't want to be yourself anymore, huh? I remember it all too well, too. You disappointed all of them, you know. Especially your mother and Lane and Luke--"

"Shut up! You don't exist! Shut up and leave me alone!" Rory stumbled backwards, putting her hands over her ears in protest against the older version of herself and glaring daggers. 

Older Rory grabbed her by the wrists in a liquid movement and yanked them roughly down and held them away. Rory struggled but Older Rory was much stronger. "You are so ignorant. God, I can't believe I was ever so naïve! Grow up, little girl," she screamed in Rory's face. "There's a great wide world out there and now you're stuck in it. Mistakes have been made. Today was one of them. Cry me a river, build a bridge, get the fuck over it, Rory, cause it ain't gonna get any better. You better just mourn it now." She turned to look behind her. There were two points of light in the distance. She smiled to herself as they came closer. "You have a choice, Rory. That's a semi truck coming. Fleming Foods, actually. You can stand in the middle of the road and wait to be turned into roadside squish. Or, you can show some backbone you stupid little girl and suck it up and go home and try to redeem yourself to them."

By this point, Rory was sobbing. "Go away," she begged. "Leave me alone," she pleaded.

"You are alone," Older Rory replied grimly. "You are the only one for miles, in exception of that Mack driver. Now, come on. Make your choice. Which is the lesser evil? Suicide or shame?"

"Why don't I have an option C?" Rory demanded, tears streaming down her face.

Older Rory shook her. "Choose, damn it! You don't have an option C because I already took it myself. A long time ago I left a closet and a bleeding boy and I ran and I picked option C. I couldn't throw myself in front of a truck and I couldn't go home, so I walked on and on down the highway and I got too hard and cynical. I don't want you to do that, Rory. You can't give up like I did. So either give it all up or be brave for once!"

"I'm too scared!" she insisted. She was, too. She was freezing and she was broken inside. Little slivers of her sanity coated her insides like busted safety glass. She had imploded in that closet.

"Of course you are!" Older Rory said, dropping her hands. "Make up your mind, Rory. Make up your mind!"

The truck zoomed by them at full speed, horn blaring and a jet stream of its own lurking around. Then, Older Rory was gone. The truck slowed down and finally stopped about fifty yards down the road.

"Are you okay, Miss?" the driver called towards Rory. She didn't turn to look at him for a few moments as she stood, staring up at the faded sunset and touching her cheeks with her fingertips.

"Where am I?" she asked falteringly.

"Uh, you're near Nooseneck, Rhode Island. This is I95. Miss, are you okay?" she heard the crunching of gravel as he came closer.

Finally she turned to look at him. He was smaller than she was, with greasy blonde hair, a widow's peak, and a red plaid flannel shirt over Dockers. He didn't look very much like a typical trucker. He looked vaguely like Luke, in fact. "I'm from Connecticut," she said. "I'm okay, I think." Her eyes came into focus for the first time in hours. "But there's someone a ways back down the road who isn't. . ."

*

"The trauma of such an event is probably what did it to her." The doctor reported in a condescending voice. He didn't believe the family had the capacity to understand medical jargon or diagnoses. They were Connecticut hicks, after all. Well, not hicks, really. He recognized the name Gilmore has having weight to throw around and money to throw away. But, still, he was a presumptuous little man who was stuck in his ideals with extra superglue.

"Eventually," he continued on, "she might come back out of herself. For now, though, you've got your Rory shell, then somewhere buried deep inside you've got your Rory filling. The filling and the shell are not connecting right now, so there isn't much chance of actual conversation with her."

He flipped a paper over on his clipboard. "The fact that the body of the boy she claimed to have been with was not found in the building she led the authorities to was not there proves that she had imagined the entire ordeal, Ms. Gilmore," he said. "We even went as far as to locate him and it turns out he had not left his house that day because he had the flu. We are not sure what has caused this disociative disorder in her mind, but rest assured we're doing our best to figure it out." He finished speaking with a popous flourish.

The mother, also named Lorelai, cleared her throat, giving him a look that made him wonder briefly if she had a job in the field of volcano freezing. "Shut up," she told him, voicing the sentiments of all the family members.

The doctor fought valiantly to hide his smirk as he bowed form the room. He failed. Luke wanted to hit him. Lorelai turned towards the window, which seemed like a mirror to the girl on the other side. She was sitting quietly on the white bed, staring down at a book open on her lap. Periodically, she would mechanically turn the page. They did not know if she was actually reading or not. They did not know if she was actually living inside the walls she built.

The doctors did not know anything. Of that, Lorelai was sure. Especially that wormy little bastard who had just departed. Good riddance. Hope you had a miserable time with us. Think happy thoughts, Lorelai. You aren't really looking through a window at your little girl in a mental ward. You can go home and wrap your arms around your daughter and watch Willy Wonka and eat junk food until one more pop rock would make you vomit for days.

Lorelai decided she was going to go home and eat that one more pop rock and see what happened.

Luke led her out with an arm slung around her shoulders, trying to comfort her while dealing with his own pain. Luke was simpler than Lorelai was in many ways. One of them was his grief dealing system. Right now, he just wanted to know why Rory had been in Providence, why she had been in that vipers' nest, why a trucker driving along I95 had found her standing by the side of the road looking utterly lost and broken. He did not want to cry, or vomit himself silly. He just wanted answers. He looked down at Lorelai and pulled her closer. Years of seemingly unrequited love were over now. Lorelai needed him and he would be there.

*

They had trusted the dwarfish man. He had told them he had a place where they would be safe for a few days. He had lied. He had led the lambs to slaughter. They had only been there a few hours when they heard the cars pull up. A few dozen, probably, and he got concerned. He told her to hide in the closet. At first she had disagreed, and then she had begged him to get in with her. But there was barely room for her and they both knew it. Finally, as the front door was opening, he shoved her in and closed the door in front of her. 

She had sunk to the floor and curled into a fetal position, too terrified to move or make a sound. She didn't want to be find.

"¿_Qué tenemos aquí_? a voice sounded, harsh and proud, into the room. His shoulders tensed unbelievably so. The voice came closer. Rory squeezed her eyes shut, praying selfishly that they wouldn't think to peek behind the lathe covering the doors and discover her. There was a crack of flesh hitting flesh. She knew what had happened without having to look. The voice had slapped him or hit him or something. He grunted in pain.

"What are you doing, gringo?" the voice addressed him. It was heavily creased with a Mexican accent. "You're trespassing, that's what you're doing," the angry, hateful voice answered for him. "This isn't your building, is it? This isn't your town, is it?"

"Is it your town, either, chicken?" he replied coolly. Then he sounded out a gasp. Rory opened her eyes to see as a shortish man with huge arms grab him by the top of his shoulder and drag him farther away, to the middle of the room. That didn't feel right.

The next few minutes, because it wasn't much more than that, passed out of Rory's conscious memory. The room had filled with many more men somewhere along the fractured timeline. Rory couldn't keep track of it all. She began to built up a wall around herself. She began to break down inside.

She could hear the grunts and screams of pain. She could hear splatters of blood hitting the floor. She didn't want to, but it seemed as though her senses were in overdrive. She wanted to scream but she couldn't. She couldn't force it past her throat.

Finally, she settled back and let it pass, hugging her thighs as tightly to her chest as she could. And, as she sat, curled up in that little ball in the bottom of a tiny, dirty closet in a dirty little building that was supposed to have been safe, she began to drift away from herself.

end.

Tinuviel Henneth

13 February 2003


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